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What Beers Could You Not Finish Drinking?

I make every effort to give each beer that I review here on The Brew Club a fair shake. I’m aware that in the case of craft beers, anyway, there is a human soul behind its creation. Someone who loves beer, and wants to share that beer-loving vision with the world.

Usually, their beer-creations are well-received. At least well enough to fit someplace in our completely unscientific 0 to 5-star rating system. But once in awhile, a beer comes along that I just can’t finish drinking. I’ve drank some pretty bad beers over the years, so its easy for me to remember the ones that had to go down the drain.

If you’re interested in some of the beers we’ve endured over the years, just check out our 0-star beers and one-star beers. You might not agree with everything on these lists (and that’s fine) but again referring to our rating scale…

0 Stars – That was a waste of thirty minutes of my life – and a few bucks. Never again!1 Star – Something that just doesn’t do it for me.

Included in the one star category are a few beers that also got a 1/2 star rating from us, and included in the 0 star category are those beers that went down the sink.

So lets take a trip back down memory lane to see what beers didn’t make it, and hopefully you’ll share some of your choice beers as well!

For me, I can only recall two beers that I could not bear to finish, and oddly they are from the opposite ends of the beer brewing spectrum.

The first beer that got to clean my drainage pipes was Bud Select 55. I don’t know why I even bothered, with this beer (thanks Liz, great choice) but I did. I couldn’t get more than a few sips of this stuff in and it just had to go. The drain was almost too worthy for this beer.

Stout? Check. Cinnamon? Check. Guy with sword on label? Check. How bad could it be? Well, as good as the beer looked, I could not bear to have more than a few sips before dumping it.

It was a big bottle, so I even let it warm up a bit and tried it again. Same result. Revulsion.

So, there you have it. A macro-brewed bottle of beer that I almost expected to dump someplace, and a craft-brewed bottle of stout. You just never know when a beer disaster will strike! Looking back, I give myself credit for only sinking 2 beers out of the dozens (maybe hundreds) of beers I’ve tried. Like I said, I’ll power through almost anything, but not everything. (Even I have standards!)

I’ve not had too many (I even used to choke down Weideman’s, back in the day.) But almost EVERY beer i’ve tried from local brewery Hub City has been awful and then there’s one i bought from Trader Joe’s called “Name Tag” which was AWFUL! Of course, with the name of Name Tag I didn’t expect too much! 🙂

I couldn’t recall the names of any that I’ve had to pour away, until yesterday evening.

I was enjoying a few drinks with a friend, and he opened a bottle of ‘The Governor’ brewed by J.W.Lees (in Manchester) but prominently bearing the name of Michelin starred chef Marco Pierre-White.

Now MPW’s temper is legendary, but at the risk of facing his wrath, neither of us could find any noticeable trace of nose, body or flavour. We split a bottle between us, and neither of us could finish more than a couple of sips.

I left out one that I distinctly remember pouring out, Harviestoun’s Oil Engine Oil. I tried this VERY early in my “beer journey of discovery” 🙂 My palette has changed dramatically, I love this style now so I suspect I’d like it if tried again.